The Libertarian Police Department

Posted by $ MikeMarotta 9 years, 12 months ago to Culture
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This was sent to me by an Objectivist friend of mine. I point out that a generation ago, it would not have been understood. It had no context. Today, it does. We are winning.
SOURCE URL: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2014/03/libertarian-police-department.html


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  • Posted by iroseland 9 years, 12 months ago
    I would also point out that despite the writers best efforts he has made a libertarian world look good. After all the cop is actually investigating a property crime. They don't actually do that these days, since they are too busy pulling people over for having one headlight that dimmer than the other.
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    • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago
      The humor does bring up the theory of policing. Many people here criticize the cops over everything; and perhaps that is good in a deeper or broader sense, rather than kowtowing to authority. The fact remains that a dim headlight is unsafe for you and others whom you could endanger.

      Moreover, seemingly pointless traffic stops (called "pretext stops") actually do bring in fleeing felons. Too often, police officers die in the line of duty performing such stops. We know from statistics that police officers with college education (2-year or 4-year) perform more stops with fewer complaints from the public. Even better records are tallied by women. So, the best police force would be heavily staffed by women with college degrees. (For a utopian view of that find a copy of the novella THE GOOD WALK ALONE by Wolf Devoon.)

      That fact remains that a civilized society hires police to protect its members, sometimes from themselves.

      Another view is that protecting your property is your responsibility. When you report a loss, the police do not go screeming in tot he night with sirens, lights, and guns. The patrol officers take a report, file it, and turn the matter over to the detectives. Detectives compile information and seek the likely perpetrators. The detectives take their case to a prosecutor (district attorney) who reviews it for completeness and correctness.

      The fact that only about 20% of all reported crimes are solved speaks to the information structure of public policing. Crimes against life demand and get more resources than crimes against property. You would complain loudly and rightfully if it were the other way around.
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      • Posted by Boborobdos 9 years, 11 months ago
        We all pay for it with increased insurance payments.

        What we do not need is police arresting folks for pot. That would free up a lot of their time.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 11 months ago
        "The fact remains that a dim headlight is unsafe for you and others whom you could endanger. Moreover, seemingly pointless traffic stops (called "pretext stops") actually do bring in fleeing felons."

        If we really want maximum safety and to catch feeling felons most effectively, we should stop every car for headlamp inspection and a search for felons. We could certainly saving thousands of lives too if we disallowed car trips that were not for an important reason. The reasoning would go, "If headlight inspection saves even one child's life, we must do it." The random searches for felons and restricting travel would save even more lives.
        (I'm sure it's obvious, but I'm not in favor of a police state even if it saves lives. I don't want random searches/inspections.)
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        • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago
          CircuitGuy, you place me on a slippery slope. First, I only explained -a- theory of policing. It is the one largely engaged. Few others are ever offered. Policing has seen three broad cultures over time: patronage, professionalism, and community. A rational framework would be different from all of those.

          That said, none of the three active theories reasonably leads to the reductio ad absurdum you offer. The standard framework is that "some" controls are necessary so that "everyone" can enjoy life. Again, it is flawed - as is the US Constitution; and for the same reasons - but largely workable in a society more or less accepting of individual rights.
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          • Posted by iroseland 9 years, 11 months ago
            When I was pulled over for a dim headlight, it was alleged to be dim and not out... Sad things was I got to the data center ( it was 0430 ) and checked.. Yea.. not really dim.. Fortunately, it was a "fix it" ticket. So, I drove back across town the next day and showed them my just as functional lights. There was another time.. I got pulled over to doing 34 in a 25. Oops except for the part where the speed limit on the road as actually 30. For that one I didn't even bother with getting a lawyer. I explained to the prosecutor that they had me for 4 over but due so geographic problems it was not 9 over. I also suggested that I would be glad to pay for the 4 over and make a donation to help the officers get some training on local geography. They knocked it down to obstruction traffic and a lower fine. Now, as for property crime.. I have an interesting one.. Back in 2002 I bought one of Milwaukee's many big old Victorians. The place had amazing woodwork. When I bought it, it came with tenants.. So, in the spring I was finally able to get them to move out. They however had figured out that the fireplace mantle was worth something. So, they crow-bard it off the wall and took it with them. So, I reported the lose of 15k in woodwork to the police who kind of didn't much care. I then set about to do what I could to prove they had it and make things easier. I talked to neighbors who were more than willing to talk to the police about seeing it get taken from the house. I payed a local crack head who was friends with the tenants to get me a nice picture of the family in front of the mantle leaning against a wall at their new place. I figured that this was a home run and went back to the police. Yea, they still didn't give a crap.. They suggested that I might try to get it back myself. That was when I pointed out that I didn't know much about police work, I didn't know much about the bill of rights, but I do know that my rifle takes 7.62x39 rounds and that it might be better to have these felons picked up by folks who do understand that they have rights. The milwaukee police were no longer the good guys to me that day. Me and my neighbors lived in one of the many Historic Districts.. We would meet up for drinks about once a month and share our knowledge and skills in restoring old houses. For a while we came very close to hiring a security company to patrol our streets because we needed to protect ourselves and all knew that we could not count on the local police to actually give a crap.
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            • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago
              We all have stories. We like to believe that financially incentivizing the police would bring us better service. And it may well improve the situation. In fact, I have worked twice for Securitas, a transnational protection agency headquartered in Sweden with about 300,000 employees in about 30 nations - and one of their services is "asset recovery." They don't say too much about it and I suspect that is because the work crosses a few lines.

              In the book, _Atlas Shrugged_, the pirate Ragnar Danneskjoeld never attacks a military vessel. From the trailers for Part III of the movie, the new Ragnar seems less gracious.

              In public policing one of the broad ethics arguments is whether the problem is rotten apples or rotten barrels. Government agencies, businesses, churches, and philosophical education societies all have their moral failures. The fact remains that the Minneapolis police department (just to name one) historically had far fewer lapses than the New Orleans PD (just to name another).

              Our theory here is that broad acceptance by many individuals of an objective moral code based on reality and reason will lead to better social institutions. We have strong reason to believe that the general market delivers the goods (and services), better than a socialized structure.

              As for hiring security guards to patrol your neighborhood. It is highly recommended - even by the pubic police. The crime triangle requires an available victim, a willing perpetrator, and the lack of a capable guardian. That capable guardian can be just a pair of eyes on a porch across the street or walking up the sidewalk. Private security first and foremost works by being a visible deterrent.

              That said, absent _some_ government...
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 11 months ago
            Yes. The slippery slope thing is a fallacy on my part since small changes don't necessarily lead to the more severe ones.

            I still favor laws and law enforcement that has very few laws but very fully enforced.
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  • Posted by BradA 9 years, 11 months ago
    Just added my thoughts to their comment section ...

    Wow ! The Police actually investigating AND solving a property crime !

    In today's world (reality , that is) the Police DO NOT respond to property crimes. You are told to go online and fill out a form which gets filed and ignored.

    So how is this ridiculous and mis-informed scenario worse than what we have today ?
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    • Posted by MattFranke 9 years, 11 months ago
      Hey Brad, be sure to check back in and read the sorry excuse of a reply you got. He cites 'greedy property owners' and 'taxpayer greed' as the cause of the problem. lol wtf?!?
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      • Posted by BradA 9 years, 11 months ago
        Thanks ! I've been working all day, a concept foreign to the typical New Yorker reader, so I just now saw it. Don't worry, I matched snark for snark !
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  • Posted by Temlakos 9 years, 11 months ago
    April fool, eh? But I agree with the comments here. The very idea of private sponsorship of the police would have been unthinkable. But it would go right along with the Committees of Safety that worked during the American War for Independence, after the Crown's law-enforcement apparatus was no longer available--or was repudiated.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 11 months ago
    Wow! What warped minds these collectivists have.
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    • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago
      The satire could have been written by an Objectivist. Read Ayn Rand's essay "The Nature of Government" which appeared in both VOS and CUI. It is possible that Murray Rothbard came to his anarcho-capitalist ideas while associating with the discussion group meeting in Ayn Rand's apartment. Others credit the idea to Samuel Konkin III. (See WIkipedia here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Edward_Konkin_III_)
      Regardless, the fact is that anarchism of any kind is incompatible with Ayn Rand's theory of Objectivism.

      That said, I also point out that even Ayn Rand said that while government is a necessary service it is not necessarily a FREE service. So, for instance, the federal Bill of Rights provision that you be entitled to trial by jury in any suit involving more than twenty dollars might have been one of the contradictions emended by Judge Narragansett at the end of "Atlas Shrugged." That, too, has been discussed here in the Gulch.

      I point out that the police officer opens the story by injecting heroin. That might be allowed by political Libertarianism of the Libertarian Party, but it is contrary to the morality of Objectivism. That, too, is a distinction previously discussed.

      So, while some who are still learning the basics of Objjectivism (after being attracted by the movie versions of _Atlas Shrugged_ ) might see the humor as the work of a "collectivist" it could just as easily been done by an Objectivist. My point in posting it was simply that a generation ago, none of its entendres would have made sense to the general readership of The New Yorker. Things have changed.
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      • Posted by Temlakos 9 years, 11 months ago
        Agreed. Yes, an Objectivist might have written it. As I recall from "The Nature of Government," Rand wanted to reserve the police, the armed services, and the law courts to one entity, answerable to the public. "Home Depot Presents the Police" is scarcely in keeping with her idea. She suggested voluntary funding, however, and mentioned a government lottery. (An adaptation of MegaMillions and Power Ball, perhaps?)

        I would suggest vesting the executive power in a Committee of Safety, as I've mentioned in other threads. A Committee of Safety draws its membership from those stakeholders best able, and motivated, to support the basic mission of government, with money or in-kind. So you would not see Home Depot or the "Omni Consumer Products" of the "RoboCop" franchise running the police. Any Committee of Safety would have more than one member, because you have more than one major stakeholder.
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      • Posted by Kittyhawk 9 years, 11 months ago
        Hi Mike, can you explain why "anarchism of any kind is incompatible with Ayn Rand's theory of Objectivism"? I've been reading and rereading her works for about 3 decades now, but I'm just not sure why she reached this conclusion. Can you shed any light on her reasoning? Thanks!
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        • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago
          Kittyhawk, personally, I believe that Ayn Rand's experience in the Russian Civil War made anarchism untenable for her. Justifying constitutional government is pretty easy on many grounds. Rand founded her politics on egoism, of course. And if you read the earlier essays you can find sentences that hint at something less government than even "army, police, and courts of law." (For one thing, Rand said that you have no inherent right to use the courts for civil actions.) Be that as it may, Rand insisted that government must exist to hold a monopoly on retaliatory force. I believe that the defining moment for her was her being hauled off a train with the other passengers and being held by armed men of some side or another in the Russian Civil War and not knowing if that would be the moment of her death. For Rand, that was the reality of anarchy. She endorsed Rome and Roman law as far from perfect; but being written publicly and enforced uniformly, it was an example of objective law.
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          • Posted by Kittyhawk 9 years, 11 months ago
            Thank you. I also went back and read "The Nature of Government" again. It's very interesting that her personal experience in Russia may have influenced her on this topic.
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        • Posted by Kittyhawk 9 years, 11 months ago
          And I loved the article, by the way. I found it funny due to the exaggeration, and actually a lot closer to the way I'd like the world to be than it is in reality today.
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